Radiation therapy involves medical procedures that selectively expose certain areas of a human body, such as cancerous tumors, to high doses of radiation. The intent of the radiation therapy is to irradiate the targeted biological tissue such that the harmful tissue is destroyed. In certain types of radiotherapy, the irradiation volume can be restricted to the size and shape of the tumor or targeted tissue region to avoid inflicting unnecessary radiation damage to healthy tissue. For example, conformal therapy is a radiotherapy technique that is often employed to optimize dose distribution by conforming the treatment volume more closely to the targeted tumor.
Before treatment radiation is delivered to a patient, a treatment plan is created using a treatment planning software. In the treatment planning procedure, a technician may review a medical image, and may draw contours that delineate target volumes and organs at risk. Where available, automatic segmentation may be used to speed up this task and to make delineations more consistent. However, there may be structures that cannot be segmented automatically, and automatic segmentation of structures always require a subsequent manual correction. Correction of automatically generated structures has two parts: correction of anatomical errors and cleanup. The cleanup part often requires a sequence of operations, such as removal of small, isolated parts, smoothing of surfaces, application of margins, and removal of undesired overlap with other structures. These tasks can be repetitive and labor intensive.
Applicant of the subject application believes that a method and an apparatus for operating on a medical image may be desirable.